Category Archives: Family Updates

Well, Sophia Lee of World Magazine has done it again. In her latest article, she has done an excellent job of capturing one of the biggest struggles of being on the mission field, how it impacts our children. We know the Funks and the Stewarts. We can vouch for their sincerity and genuine love for their villages and more importantly for their children. Your faithful support has provided the means for us to fly thousands of pounds of desperately needed food to Luke and Sarah in Kobuk.

As parents, we know and accept the challenges of mission work, but often it is tough because our decisions affect our kids too.

Pray for us, but more importantly, please pray for Sabrina, Miriam, and Natalie. Our children are “the chink in the armor that Satan often uses to attack us because that’s where we’re weakest.” Being an MK (missionary kid) or a KM (kid missionary) has very different outcomes, and there is a very fine line between them.

Like this:

Each year we go out on the “snowmachine” riding through the woods looking for the perfect tree. Some years it is brutally cold (-40) but this year it was above zero. It is always a fun time and the girls are asking earlier and earlier each year “when can we go get the tree?” Once we get it home it takes some rigging to get the “Dr. Seuss” tree into a stand. The trunk is only about 1.5″ in diameter and you can not find stands to fit them. The frozen tree takes almost 24 hours to thaw out enough to decorate and soaks up enough water to drown a camel. We will post a picture once it is decorated. Merry Christmas!

Like this:

So my plans to work outside today and make progress on the new addition are on hold. It’s -47 outside right now so I’m going to try and get caught up on the mountain of things stacked on my desk.

As we started the addition this summer I had to remove one of our heaters. The addition has not progressed to the stage where I can install it in its new location. So as a result we have one undersized heater for the house, trying its best to keep it 120 degrees warmer than the outside. I must say I’m impressed, it’s holding its own if only with the thinest of margins. It does concern me though that we have no back-up or second heat source other than electric heaters. Heat in an Alaskan winter is not a luxury it is a critical life support system! In aviation we have a phrase that applies here too. “One is none and two is one.” One heater is none if there is a failure, two heaters gives a little safety net. Right now our safety net is electric heat but in a power outage we would be sunk until I could get our generator warmed up enough to run. Call me paranoid or weird; but with all my training as a Pilot, EMT and Firefighter I think about this stuff a lot especially with a wife and three little girls to protect and keep warm.

With the colder weather Lyndy is having to make adjustments to her routine to feed us. Propane won’t boil below -43 so the cook stove is hard to use right now. Time to use the Crockpot! Now I have to concentrate on paper work while the house smells like a gourmet restaurant with the moose stew simmering away downstairs.